As I looked at the pure, dignified, and commanding outline of the face of Bérangère, she appeared to me to have been a fitting wife for the hero whose effigy had inspired me with so much admiration when I visited it a few years since, at Fontevraud. Her nose is slightly aquiline, her upper lip short and gracefully curved, her chin beautifully rounded, as are her cheeks; her eyebrows are clearly marked, and her eye full though not large; but, even in stone, it has a tender, soft expression, extremely pleasing, and there is a sadness about the mouth which answers well to the tenderness of the eye. The forehead is of just proportion, and shaded by a frill which passes across, over which an ample veil is drawn: the whole confined by a diadem, the only part of the statue rather indistinct. Round her fine majestic throat is a band, to which a large ornament is attached, which rests on her chest; her head reclines on an embroidered pillow; her drapery falls over her figure and round her clasped hands in graceful folds, and the dog and lion at her feet complete the whole of this charming statue, which is of workmanship equal to that of the exquisite _four_ in the little vault at Fontevraud.[2] Bérangère was daughter of Sancho VI., king of Navarre--not, as some historians say, a princess of Castile or Arragon. After Richard's death, Philip-Augustus confirmed to her the dominion of Maine, in exchange for part of Normandy, which had been settled on her as her dower. She lived for more than twenty years in the town of Le Mans, where her memory was long preserved as _La Bonne Reine Bérangère_. She founded the monastery of Epau, near Le Mans, where the mausoleum was erected which now adorns the Cathedral of St. Julien. [Footnote 2: See a description of the statues of Coeur de Lion, Henry and Elionor, and Isabella of Angoulême, in "A Summer amongst the Bocages and the Vines."] Two houses are pointed out in the Grande Rue, said to have formed part of her palace; and the singularity of the ornaments which can be traced amidst their architecture, makes it probable that the tradition is not incorrect. The abbey of Epau formerly stood about half a league from Le Mans, on the banks of the river Huisne, in the midst of a fertile plain; the widow of Richard founded it, in 1230, for Bernardins of the order of Citeaux. The inhabitants of Le Mans destroyed the monastery, after the battle of Poitiers, in 1365, fearing that the English would take possession of it and render it a place of defence; and it was reconstructed early in the fifteenth century. The church alone remains, which, after the Revolution, was desecrated, as has been related, and the tomb of the foundress treated so unceremoniously.